


A Proper Bath

by echoinautumn (maybetwice)



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, First Time In A Bed, Woman on Top
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 17:20:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6916387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/echoinautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After months of roughing it in the Ferelden countryside, there are a few creature comforts Alistair is looking forward to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Proper Bath

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted on tumblr by lemonsharks, 'Alistair/Aeducan - first time in a proper bed after a proper bath'

*

Alistair is crouched over his pack when the soft knock at the door sends him leaping to his feet. When his hand flies out for his sword out of instinct, he remembers belatedly that he left it next to the heap of his salty, unwashed armor, and that he’s back in Eamon’s castle. Back in Redcliffe. Besides, he thinks, shoving himself up straight and away from his pack, anything that might _attack_ him is unlikely to knock before doing so.

“Yes?” He’s barely across the room when the door opens and Bryn steps through, pressing the heavy wooden thing closed behind her as quickly as she opened it. 

Alistair wonders if she’s concerned that someone will see them, that she won’t want these people to have the wrong — or, rather, the _right_ — idea about the two of them. He could hardly blame her for that. Alistair isn’t sure he wants the same people who know him only as an inconvenient, scraped up bastard to know that Bryn is precious to him, but Alistair is anything but subtle, and he couldn’t hide how desperately he adores her, even if he tried. Not even being in Redcliffe can change that.

“I thought you might be finished with your bath by now,” Bryn explains, adjusting the soft, linen dress Eamon’s servants must have brought her. It’s far too long for her, cut for a human woman and not an adult dwarf, but she’s tied the hem into the belt that keeps the whole thing from sliding to her ankles. 

“Oh,” says Alistair dumbly. Their fumbling in the darkness of his tent is hardly unpleasant, but he’s never seen her wear anything but armor and its various components, since neither of them can afford to be caught unaware of an ambush in camp. And so the vision before him — her dress softly clinging to her breasts, her long hair damp and unbraided, her cheeks faintly flushed a dusky rose — is more breathtaking than Alistair ever dreamed. 

“Alistair?” 

Alistair’s eyes snap up to her face from here he’s been openly staring at her hips and forcing himself to think about what she’s said. “Yes,” he answers hastily, before remembering that he bathed in another part of the house so she wouldn’t have to wait for him. “Yes, I finished ages ago.” 

“I should have come earlier, then.” Bryn slides the bolt into place and smiles nervously up at him. 

Their ragged group is staying in the guest rooms in the north corridor. Away from the rest of the household and their stares at the bastard boy who might yet be king, praise the Maker. Bryn’s room is just across the hall from his, and Alistair wonders which lingering ghost of his childhood it is that kept him from going to her room first.

Alistair twists his hands at his side until she’s standing in front of him in her maddeningly distracting dress, unsure what to do with them here, in a place like this. It’s all so _easy_ when they’re out in the field, off being Grey Wardens saving Ferelden from the Blight. That makes sense to him, but not this. Not being clean and warm, safely hidden away in Redcliffe from darkspawn and Loghain’s assassins.

 _It’s safe here,_ Alistair tells himself. 

He swallows and starts to reach for her before pulling back again, but Bryn takes his half-extended hand and presses her small face into his palm. Her breath is warm and, when she kisses the center of his palm tenderly, Alistair feels like he’s just taken a blow to the chest. 

“I hope you don’t mind—” she begins, before Alistair laughs and presses his thumb against her lower lip. 

“My dear,” he interrupts, hungrily tracing the curve of her mouth with his thumb first, and then his eyes. “The only thing I have it in me to mind right now is how damnably tired I am.” 

Of course, it’s not the whole truth. Isolde follows him with her eyes wherever he goes in the Castle, burning with guilt now that her son and her husband are safe and recovering and she has learned the truth of Alistair’s father. He certainly minds that Eamon is plotting his future for him, that he may be made king without anyone thinking to ask him if it’s what he wants, or even if it’s the right thing for Ferelden. 

Then there’s the Blight: the ever-present threat, months without a peaceful night’s sleep because of their plague of nightmares, the journey to Orzammar that looms over their quest to recruit an army in time. And somewhere amongst all this, there is still more to be fearful of. Alistair knows she is trying to hide it, but Bryn’s dread of returning home to Orzammar is betrayed by practically everything she does. Not that Alistair can blame her, if his feelings about returning to Redcliffe are anything to go by.

Then Bryn’s fingers creep along Alistair’s loose tunic, gathering the material in her fists, and Alistair thinks that she might, for once, be able to put her fear aside. A rare smile spreads across her face and Alistair thinks he might be able to put his anxieties aside, too, even if it’s only because he’s only too tired to be concerned about the enormity of the thing set before them.

“We’ve been travelling hard for months,” Bryn begins, her fingers finding Alistair’s bare stomach beneath the cloth, even though her eyes never move from his. “We could use a break.”

“And a bath,” Alistair cuts in nervously, swallowing hard around his hammering pulse. She doesn’t know, she must not know that she can fluster him with a word, and his only defense is a disarming lack of seriousness. “I mean, needed one. Really needed one. I can hardly believe you let me near your tent, smelling the way I did.”

“But we don’t have to sleep in a tent tonight,” Bryn offers with something approaching optimism, her eyebrows half-lifted in the way she does when she’s trying to say something obvious without actually saying it. “And we’re not leaving for Orzammar for a few days.”

“I know a quiet part of the arlwood where we can probably get more than a few minutes alone without all the servants staring, and—”

“Alistair,” Bryn interrupts, her featherlight touch tickling his hip bone. He can’t pretend not to understand anymore. His cock twitches inside his soft, woolen leggings, but if he hardens now, there will be nothing to mask his eagerness for her. 

“I want _this,_ ” she finishes, tracing the line from his hip downward. 

He’s unbearably hard almost before the words are out of her mouth. Alistair sucks in a sharp breath, blinking rapidly to buy himself time while all the blood drains from his head. It gives him no time to prepare when Bryn rocks forward onto her toes, pulling him down to her with the shirt caught in her hand, and Alistair actually whimpers when she crushes her mouth against his. 

He moves quickly after that, tangling one hand in the loose, down-soft hair at her neck and curling one hand around her thigh. Alistair lifts her from the floor effortlessly, without thought for anything but easing the ache in his back as he bends down to capture her mouth, and Bryn struggles with lifting her skirt before balancing herself against his weight by squeezing her legs together around him. Alistair isn’t even aware that he’s still making that same, needy whine until she presses an open-mouthed kiss to his freshly-shaven neck and it turns to an embarrassingly loud cry.

“Alistair,” she laughs, pressing her nose into his neck with a shaky gasp for air. “I know we aren’t in camp, but the others—”

“Hang the others,” Alistair groans, feeling reckless for once. He fumbles with the hand at her shoulder until he has a better grip on her ass. “Let them hear. I don’t care.” 

Bryn buries her laugh into his shoulder, mouthing the raised skin of an old scar from his Templar training with her lips, but she doesn’t argue the point with him. If anything, she arches toward him with need, clinging to his shoulders so she can more easily push herself down against his erection. Her mouth falls open with a silent shiver that extends to her toes, flexing against his back, and he isn’t so far gone that he doesn’t see her eyelashes flutter or smell her arousal cutting through the lingering scent of the sweet-smelling soap they make in the castle. 

Alistair takes a few awkward steps back toward his bed, careful with his precious burden, who doesn’t seem to notice that he nearly drops her in his enthusiasm for even one comfortable night with her. 

“Alistair,” Bryn moans, so softly that Alistair feels it in the puff of air on his neck and the vibrations from her chest into his. Her fingers slip a little and she rocks forward against the shape of his hardened prick. “Please.”

“What was that?” Alistair laughs, reckless with pleasure, the backs of his knees bumping uncomfortably against the wooden bed behind him. They tumble down onto the soft mattress — Maker, softer than anything he’s slept on in years — with Bryn sprawled over his chest.

When he looks up at her again, Bryn’s eyes reflect the flickering light of the fire, and he sees that she has a faint smile breaking the usually solemn lines of her face. With a flash of mischief, she pushes herself up and shoves his leggings out of the way, curling her hand as far around his cock as her petite, sword-calloused fingers can. 

Alistair bucks up into her tight fist, too dazed by his yearning for her to realize that she’s planted her weight in her knees on either side of him and shifted forward so the bare head of his cock brushes her slick entrance. His surprised cry turns to a long moan by Bryn’s quiet gasp in his ear. He’s buried fully inside her so suddenly, all of her wrapped around all of him, that Alistair thinks he must have hurt her. But then her hand flies up to steady herself, her forehead falls forward onto his shoulder, and she pushes back down onto him with a desperate noise he’s _sure_ he’s never heard from her before. 

Alistair breathes again, a ragged noise that seems to echo from the cold stone walls, louder than he could have possible been.

“Please, please, oh _please_ ,” Bryn pants to their off-rhythm movements, fucking herself down onto him with abandon until they reach the right tempo, his short, stuttered movements matching her downward thrusts. 

He curls one hand around her still-covered breast, circling a thumb around her nipple. When Alistair tips forward and takes it into his mouth, she shudders through her whole body and tightens around him not only once, but in powerful waves that threaten to undo his astonishing display of self-control. Her breath comes shorter and shorter between staccato moans, and then not at all, because she comes apart in his arms. She’s trembling, yes, fingernails biting through Alistair’s linen tunic, but she gives a resounding cry that echoes through the chamber and almost certainly down the corridor where the other rooms will hear. 

The view from beneath her is spectacular, but Alistair hardly has time to appreciate what he has never been able to see in the dark of their tent: her head pitched back, eyes fluttering like shadows in the firelight, the shiver up her spine as she peaks. His own climax comes on sudden force, with black spots bursting over the vision above. 

When he comes down from the rush of it, Bryn is nearly catatonic on top of him, her cheek pressed into his shoulder and her eyes still closed. Alistair tips her chin upward and kisses her slowly. He hadn’t really thought about all the things they were missing out on in the field. Taking their time to enjoy each other is one of them. 

“You’ve never peaked so fast,” he murmurs into her mouth, feeling the soft shape of them move against his as Bryn tries to recapture their kiss. 

When she draws back, there is a languid smile resting softly on her gently swollen mouth. “Neither have you.”

Alistair rolls her gently off of him, wincing as he slides easily out of her and lays out next to her, curling his toes up with the luxury of it. She curls into the pillow next to him and he grins at the picture she makes: dark, limp with satisfaction, and utterly enchanting. 

“They’ll all have heard,” she sighs, but for once, Bryn doesn’t seem at all concerned about it, or anything at all.

“I hope they’ll hear a lot more than just that,” he suggests heatedly, reaching out to tug at the sleeve of her over-large dress. “We might be able to get one time without any clothes or armor to shove out of the way.”

Alistair tucks her into his arms and rests his chin beside the spray of black hair on the pillow, molding his body around hers. Bryn hums in response, a happy noise. “And another bath,” she says dreamily. “Or three.”

“A proper one,” he adds sleepily. “Since we have all the time we need.”


End file.
